Wednesday, June 29, 2011

2011 update...

I know, been a long time since the last update...

Lots of progress that has gone on. The car is pretty much finished, with the exception of the traction battery pack. Recent activities:

  • 12 volt fuse blocks and harnesses
  • Motor compartment finished
  • Motor compartment component relay board under rear seat built and installed
  • 12 volt battery cables, mounting, fusing, and top-off charger under rear seat
  • Temporary dashboard structure fabricated and installed
  • Temporary dashboard faceplate instrumentation installed and wired up
  • Carpets, door panels, window cranks, rear view mirror, and sun visors installed
  • Front seats installed
  • Headlight high beam control box installed
  • Charger door interlock switch installed

The 12 volt fuse assignments were created on the fly, with some functions ganged up on the same fuse to save space.

The motor compartment has everything in it - motor cooling blower, controller liquid cooling system, and moisture protection covers for the Zilla and Hairball.

The motor compartment component relay board uses the Hairball main contactor control signal to fire off an intermediate relay that enables the main contactor, motor cooling blower, controller cooling system, and cooling system fans. Once the Hairball gets the Start signal from the iginition switch, and determines that all systems are functioning, it will turn on all of these things. When this happens, all the fan and pump noises will start. This will probably be the loudest thing about the car, except for tire noise when it's moving.

The 12 volt battery is an Optima blue top AGM, with a big honkin' ANL 100A fuse to protect all wirning.

The temporary dashboard structure is made out of wood and will hold the dashboard faceplate, that contains the (left to right) Link10 (always on), Speedometer with status LEDs, digital 12 volt system voltage meter (always on), digital RPM counter, DVM for motor amps, DVM for six LM34 temperature senders (locations TBD), the controller Valet switch, the rear window defroster switch, the Hazard switch, and the 12 volt accessory socket. I didn't add any heater or defroster hardware - I decided that I could use a portable heater/blower that could be placed where desired and powered off of the accessory socket (when not using a cell phone charger etc.).

Carpets, interior accessories, and the front seats all went in without a hitch.

The headlight dimmer switch is on the turn signal lever, and provides a short to ground whenever it's pulled towards the driver. To avoid having to hold the lever in the pulled position to keep the high beams on, I built a control box with a flip-flop for a pull-on, pull-off action. The box has a 2N3055 transistor driver for the high beam relay.

The charger door interlock switch is a microswitch mounted on a bracket that is activated by the position of the charger door (which used to be the gas cap door).

What else - oh yeah, pictures! Need to upload those next...

Also, I mailed off a check to Elite Power Solutions in Phoenix for the traction batteries and BMS. I'm going to use the 100ah 4-pack Lithium Ion GBS batteries. I decided to skip over the AGM idea and go for the gusto.

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